First enterprise application for Facebook launched

Enterprises are being offered the chance to use Facebook. Open source enterprise
content management company Alfresco has integrated its application with the
social networking site to enable its users to communicate more effectively with
customers and partners. Alfresco claimed that it was the first Facebook application
specifically developed for business users.

Chief Technical Officer John Newton said that the company had originally planned
to develop an application for MySpace but thought that Facebook was much more
appealing to business users.

He admitted that there were some companies who had reacted to the rise of social
networking sites such as Facebook by trying to prohibit their use by employees
but said that many companies, particularly those with younger staff members,
thought it was a useful marketing tool. Newton said many organizations wanted
to be as open as possible: "This is about the wisdom of crowds," he
said. "You see many companies, like IBM, adopting the 'open' mindset and
abandoning the idea that communication should be closed."

The Alfresco integration with Facebook will enable an organization's employees
to access and use corporate information with tools they feel comfortable with.
Features will include the ability to upload and view documents through the Facebook
news feed.

Newton said that some of Alfresco's customers had already expressed interest
in the Facebook integration. "Most of the interest has been from organizations
interested in being as open to as many people as possible: these include churches
and government organizations."

He said that some of the security concerns that employers had expressed about
Facebook didn't apply. "Apart from the layers of security within Facebook
itself -- and they operate at many levels -- we also have the ability to authenticate
users."

As to whether this is the first enterprise application. Newton said that the
company had had many conversations with Facebook in developing the integration
and he had been told that there was no other company developing a business tool
for Facebook ... not yet anyway.